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Yemen rebels used talks to rearm: coalition

The coalition resumed airstrikes on Sanaa on August 9, nearly three days after negotiations in Kuwait were suspended, with one raid reported to have hit a food factory in the city during working hours, killing 14 people.

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World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said all remaining patients and staff have been evacuated from the hospital that was partially destroyed.

The large toll for a single home was the result of a “double-tap” incident, with the first strike collapsing the house on top of the family, and relatives from the neighborhood scrambling to try to rescue them, only for the rescuers themselves to be targeted in subsequent strikes.

The attack comes just a day after the Saudi-led coalition attacked a Doctors Without Border-run hospital in Yemen’s northern Hajja province, killing at least 11 people and wounding 13.

MSF Director General Joan Tubau called on the Saudi coalition and its supporters to take steps to better protect civilians.

The coalition is also investigating an air strike on Saturday which allegedly hit a school where 10 children were killed.

“When jets target training camps, they can not distinguish between ages”, Coalition spokesperson General Ahmed Assiri told AFP Sunday.

Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that it would evacuate staff from six hospitals in Yemen, following the deaths of more than a dozen people in the bombing of a hospital earlier this week.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply disturbed” by the intensification of air raids in Yemen.

“Coalition officials repeatedly state that they honor worldwide humanitarian law, yet this attack shows a failure to control the use of force and to avoid attacks on hospitals full of patients.” it continued.

Yemen’s conflict pits an internationally-recognized government backed by a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite rebels, who captured the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014.

Projectiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have killed seven civilians in the southern Saudi city of Najran, Saudi state television has reported.

MSF added that it had, over the past eight months, met twice with officials of the Saudi-led coalition (SLC) in Riyadh to seek assurances that would end air strikes on its facilities.

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Saudi Arabia reacted angrily to a decision in June to blacklist the coalition after a United Nations report found the alliance responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in Yemen a year ago.

Aftermath of Abs hospital which was hit by an airstrike